Abortion issue returns to House

The Republican-controlled House is about to wade back into the controversial issue of abortion Thursday, even as the party’s presidential candidates largely avoid the issue.

The relative silence of the Republican candidates is mostly a sign that they’re all committed to anti-abortion positions, not that they don’t care about the issue, anti-abortion groups say.

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But Republicans can’t let social conservatives feel overlooked by the focus on the tea party’s spending concerns — so they’re about to make sure those critical GOP voters know that they haven’t forgotten about their campaign pledge to block federal funding of abortions.

The House is set to vote Thursday on the Protect Life Act, legislation that would ban women from using the health reform law’s tax subsidies to purchase health plans that cover abortions. The debate will reopen an issue so divisive that it nearly killed President Barack Obama’s health reform legislation last year.

The vote comes just a few weeks after Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee, demanded that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America turn over 10 years of documents as part of an investigation into whether the group spends federal money on abortions.

But while the House floor is returning to the abortion and Planned Parenthood fights for the first time since the spring, the Republican presidential candidates have barely raised the abortion issue this year.

That’s because all the Republican candidates are on the same page on the issue, according to the Family Research Council President Tony Perkins — who sees it as a sign of the strength of the anti-abortion position in Republican politics.

There was a brief flare-up over the summer after front-runner Mitt Romney refused to sign the Susan B. Anthony List’s anti-abortion pledge, saying that it was “overly broad and would have unintended consequences.” But he outlined his own anti-abortion views in National Review, and the controversy appears to have largely blown over.

“It’s not a point of contention. In the general [election], it will become more of an issue,” Perkins said.

It’s one of the first Republican primaries in recent history in which there hasn’t been a pro-choice candidate in the race, like a “Rudy Giuliani running,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “This is basically a pro-life primary, and they’re focusing on other issues.”